"This is my commandment that you love one another and your joy may be full"

Have you ever had those times where you feel like everywhere you go and talk to people its almost as if God told them to say something just because he wanted YOU to hear it? Almost like God is talking directly to you through those people? Well, I think I've been experiencing a little bit of that lately. Since we just did the 30 hour famine, we've been talking a lot about love lately. Talking about how hard it is to love someone you don't even know, and drawing the line between selfish and self-less love. Also, part of what my pastor has been talking about is basically how we are no better than anyone else.(or maybe that's just how I interpreted what he was saying. who know?) I think that these two things were connected together and shown to me because in a way its kinda something I've been struggling with in my life.

I never really realized very much, but now that I look back on my life I realize that a lot of times I can be a stuck-up jerk. I sometimes tend to push away people who I feel aren't like me or I think can't relate to. Sometimes its annoying people who just flat out get on my nerves, and sometimes its people who I just think are weird. But when I really think about it, there really is no definition of normal. In fact, I'm pretty weird myself, and I'm really nothing like the "average" 15 year old girl. So who am I to judge other people for being weird? A few weeks ago, my brother was getting mad at me for not liking one of his friends and accepting him for who he is; and although the kid is still loud, obnoxious, and gets on my nerves I've been trying harder to have patience with him and realize that not everyone is like me. The sermon text from this week was really something that stood out to me. Although we would never come out and say it, I think we tend to be a lot like the Pharisees in Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector:

"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank You that I am not like other men--extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess."
-Luke 18:10-12

I think a lot of times we look at ourselves and think "Well I go to church every Sunday, I read my Bible, and I pray, so therefore I am better than the average person". This got me thinking back to the 30 hour famine and the fact that every day twenty-nine THOUSAND children die because of hunger. But why? I am no better of a person than they are, yet I am blessed with food and clean water to drink everyday. I have a house to stay in, a bed to sleep in, a shower to get clean in, I've never had to flee my house for the sake of my life; yet they do, and I am no better than them. It kinda makes me want to help them more. It makes me want to use the resources that I have not only for the well-being of myself, but also for others.

Someone(I forgot who it was) said that the difference between the most righteous man and the most sinful man is no greater than the difference between owing somebody $8,000,000 and $8,000,001. I thought that was a pretty good comparison because God is so much higher than us, that when we compare ourselves to one another there really is not much of a difference at all.

Another way God spoke to me in the last couple of weeks was actually through myself. A lot of times when I write things, I like to write things that I'm convicted of myself so I can try to work on my own problems. Apparently that's what I was doing in one of my few attempts to write poetry. I found a poem that I wrote basically about how we should show love to everyone and do what we can to help them, and one of the lines in it said "I believe that the day we realize we're no better than the man next door There would be less hungry, and fewer poor". I found this like a week before the famine and I'm pretty sure that I found it for a reason. In a way I kinda thought of myself as a hypocrite because I haven't really changed much since now and the time I wrote it. So I took those words and tried to use them as my motivation for the famine. In a way, I guess it helped because I tried to make what I was doing a little less selfish and a little more self-less. I tried to do what I was doing for the write reason, and knowing in the end that it helped other people besides myself. Because most of the time, my life is all about me and for once I wanted to make it about someone else.

So instead of being like the Pharisee and thanking God for not making me like the other people in the world, I am going to try to be more like the tax collector was because in the end he was the one better off. "And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Lk. 18:13-14)

Scripture also tells us that we cannot love God if we don't love others. Its kinda a sad thought....not loving God, but I guess I've done it.
Just something to think about.

~*Elizabeth